WEST PERSIA, LATE 19TH CENTURY

The design of this wonderful Bijar carpet has a long ancestry. As is so often the case with carpet designs, it originates with the weavers of Kirman in the 17th century whose designs involved complex arrangements of interlocking arabesques enclosing floral sprays across the entire field. The lattice of split-palmettes on the present carpet began to be woven in north west Persia in the 18th century and by the 19th century it had become so well associated with the area that it was given the name 'Garrus', a small weaving centre near to Bijar, although it was not exclusively woven there.

One of the best known carpets from that group, inscribed as being the work of Garrus and dated 1794, was formerly in the McMullan Collection, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (M.S. Dimand and Jean Mailey, Oriental Rugs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1973, fig.120, p.87). The rich colours displaying the characteristic arabesque design lent themselves to the demands of the European interior particularly in the second half of the 19th century, and as a result a number of examples are found today in country houses in Britain and Western Europe. Close comparables have sold in these Rooms over the years, including an example on 19 April 2016, lot 83 and another on 12 October 2012, lot 61.